Musical Lineup Announced for the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party — Free Concerts!

May 16, 2012

Today the musical lineup for this year’s Big Apple Barbecue Block Party was announced. The event–the 10th annual–takes place this year on Saturday, June 9, and Sunday, June 10.

Three bands will be playing each day, and the music, if not the barbecue, is free. The Block Party takes place in Madison Square Park. The musical selection spans punk rock, alt-country, and soul music genres, and the schedule follows.

SATURDAY, JUNE 9

1 p.m. Jon Langford–One of the founding members of the celebrated New Wave band The Mekons, Langford has had a rich solo career since the mid-1980s and is a member of the Chicago-based group Waco Brothers and also occasionally tours with the Three Johns. A visual artist as well, Langford has created labels for Dogfish Head Brewery.

2:45 p.m. JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound–Vocalist JC Brooks, guitarist Billy Bungeroth, drummer Kevin Marks, keyboardist Andy Rosenstein, and bassist Ben Taylor make up an outfit that modernizes the Soul sounds of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Brooks’s voice is often compared to that of Otis Redding and James Brown, and the band regularly performs covers of Wilco and Luscious Jackson as part of its repertoire.

4:30 p.m. Southern Culture on the Skids–Headquartered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Southern Culture often writes songs about food: fried chicken and banana pudding being two obsessions, the latter of which they’ve been known to pelt the audience with during performances. Think Weird Al meets the Allman Brothers.

SUNDAY, JUNE 10

1 p.m. Roadside Graves–The Metuchen, New Jersey, band is a favorite of legendary Jersey scribe Jim Testa and has four albums in the can. Of them Testa wrote: “Jeremy Benson’s finger-picked electric guitar leads flowed from the frets with prickling intensity, buoyed by Rich Zilg’s strummed acoustic. The band blends the free-flowing guilelessness of the Grateful Dead with the handmade clatter of Bob Dylan and the Band’s The Basement Tapes, and somehow makes it all work.”

2:45 p.m. The Revelations featuring Tre Williams–Daytona Beach native Tre Williams first came into the public eye when he signed with Nas’s Ill Will Records, and indeed the singer guest on Nas’s Hip Hop Is Dead. With the Revelations he has recorded one EP and two albums, including 2011’s Concrete Blues, which was named Soul Album of the Month by Echoes magazine.

4:30 p.m. Alejandro Escovedo and the Sensitive Boys–New York old-timers might remember when Escovedo–once a member of the SF punk outfit the Nuns–helped the Kinman brothers found the country-punk band Rank and File in the East Village in the early ’80s before abruptly moving to Austin, before everyone else. Since then, Escovedo has turned out 11 solo albums and is widely regarded as one of the prime progenitors of modern alt-country.